Construction of the moonshiner’s residence building nears completion on Tower Mountain south of Spokane, Washington.
A rusty, bullet-ridden bathtub. Tin children’s toys bearing faint traces of colorful paint. Abandoned eyeglasses relegated to decades of repose in the privy pit. 100-year-old Mason jars filled with indeterminate content.
Tower Mountain yields its secrets
History is coming alive at the historic Moonshine Shack restoration on Tower Mountain near Spokane, Washington.
When project director Mick Deviny was a young boy, the old-timers who lived on Tower Mountain since the moonshine era pointed out historical artifacts and structures on his property and talked of the moonshiner and his family who produced illicit alcohol at the site during Prohibition in the 1920s. Mick plans to open a small museum at the site.
The project engineers drew inspiration from legitimate, legal, local spirits procured at Spokane’s Dry Fly Distillery.
This artifact was identified as a 100-year-old jar of canned cherries by popular vote of the project engineers & visitors.
Following the footprint
As the restoration project began in 2018, parts of the 1920s-era distillery building remained standing and the engineers have incorporated them into the restoration whenever possible. At a small local boutique sawmill, the project engineers milled boards for the shack from trees that they salvaged from a recent real estate transaction in the Spokane Valley.
“Milling our own boards allowed us to build to a historically accurate size and substantially reduced the cost of the construction,” noted project engineer Henry Pierce, “and it gave us a greater emotional connection to the project.”
“We built the replicated Moonshine Shack on the original footprint of a cabin where the moonshiner lived with his wife,” said Mick, “and we even found some children’s artifacts, along with the distillery building footprint.”
Lost spectacles
Project director Mick has located the site where the moonshiners set up their still, as well as the location of a pig pen, privy, and chicken yard. During the construction, engineers found the moonshiners’ original tin bathtub, since marred by bullet holes. Mick is confident there are more artifacts to be found at the site.
“It’s likely that target practice by local trespassers in the years after the moonshine activity produced the bullet holes,” said Mick, “but it makes for an interesting visual in the context of the story.”
Please use our contact form to book a tour of the
Moonshine Shack or the Eikenbary-Pierce House.
Stained glass windows from the Eikenbary-Pierce House made their way into the Moonshine Shack rebuild. Restored by David Glass, Spokane.
Generations of creatures have inhabited the historical site of the Moonshine Shack on Tower Mountain.
Restoration engineers found this bed headboard used by the moonshiners.